Almost Three Weeks To Graduation!

Hello! Hope you are all having a great weekend!

It is approximately three weeks and one day until graduation! I am so excited! I am now in the stages of sorting out hiring my graduation gown and sorting out my plans of what I will be wearing on graduation.

I have decided to hire my gown rather than buy it, but am currently in the stages of deciding what photography package I would like (and what my parents would like). I never knew there could be so many choices for photography packages! However, like many people I know, my thoughts are now mainly on what to wear for graduation! The dress code is academic wear and so now I have the fun job of buying a new outfit for graduation.

Although I studied at the main Luton campus, I am going to graduate at Putteridge Bury campus which I am very excited about! I visited the campus during a conference at the end of my second university year, and loved the look of the campus. I am also very excited to see my university friends again! I am really looking forward to spending time with them at graduation and celebrating all the hard work that we have put in throughout university (and am going to try not to cry when saying goodbye to them).

Good luck to everyone with their UCAS applications! I know in the next few weeks my sister will find out whether she has got into university with her diploma so good luck to anyone getting results in the next few weeks which will impact your UCAS application!

See you next week!
Robyn

What am I going to do after uni?!

Hello again! Hope you are having a great weekend!

This week has been pretty much the same as the last, mainly focusing on doing lots of work and catching up with friends. I also saw my younger sister's presentation for finishing college this week. It was a very proud moment to see how well she has done in the past two years and now in September like many of you reading this will be is going to start university in September!

Aside from work and seeing my sister finish college, my mind has been focused on my dream future career and the steps I need to take to get started into a career in Psychology. I have now finished my Psychology degree, and it terrifies me. There is nothing I would love more than to be able to go back to university in September and start studying Psychology again with all the friends I have made at university. However this is not the case, and I need to begin to look into how I plan to get a job and career in Psychology.

Currently, I am looking into getting volunteer work within Psychology that will improve my chances of a good job and will show my commitment to the subject. During my time in Luton I was volunteering at Headway in Bedford. It is a wonderful charity and I thoroughly enjoyed volunteering there and so am trying to get similar volunteering closer to my hometown. I am also trying to get volunteer work more closely related to mental health although this is a lot more difficult to find. I have also been looking into potential jobs within psychology in which only a degree is needed. I would love to do postgraduate study on the future and plan to save up with my earnings from a job. I still need to look more in depth into my future plans, but now I have lots of free time to decided what future path is right for me!

Congratulations to everyone who has finished exams/ final assessments! Good luck to everyone that is sitting final exams! I know the time between exams-university is a very nervous time, but you can only do your best so enjoy the rest of your summer! 

See you next week!
Robyn

A week of being home.

Hello! Hope you're having a great weekend!

I have now been living back at home for a full week. At the moment it does not feel as if I have left university as I am in the same routine that I have been for the past two years after finishing the academic year. It just feels as if I am on my summer break and that in three months I will be back at university. I am however already starting to miss my university friends and am very much looking forward to seeing everyone again next month for graduation.

This week I have started back at my summer job and so have been mainly working. After spending the last year working extremely hard on my studies, the almost three weeks between finishing my studies and starting back at my summer job has been a long enough break and I am happy to be back doing something productive with my day. I have also been using my free time to spend some time with my family and to also do leisure reading - its s great feeling to pick up a novel after spending months of reading textbooks!

I have also been looking into getting some volunteer work in my hometown within Psychology. I have sent emails of interest to several volunteering companies and have received some information about volunteering applications. A few days ago I also received an email giving me the time of my graduation! The thought of graduating in just over a month is very exciting! I need to start worrying about hiring my gown soon.

So this week, I have been very happy to be home, and am becoming increasingly excited about graduation!

Good luck with any final exams/assessments that you have left! See you next week!

Robyn

Moving Home

Hello all! Hope you are having a great weekend!

 

This week has been a fun but quite emotional week of preparing to move home. I've tried to make the most of my last week in Luton, spending as much time as possible with my university friends and visiting towns around Luton and also going to parts of Luton that I have yet to visit.

 

 

On Monday, me and my friend Divya went shopping in Milton Keynes which is just a short bus journey away and after visiting there I was so gutted that I had never been to visit earlier - it was so much fun! On Tuesday I spent the day in Luton and went to visit the Wardown museum in Wardown park. It was great to learn about the history behind the town I had spent the past three years living in and be able to tell people a little about what I had learnt about the town we had all been living in. On Wednesday it was my last day at volunteering at Headway in Bedford. I had a brilliant time volunteering there and will miss the volunteering and the people I have met. On Thursday me and Divya went to visit our friend Saphia who commuted to Luton and so lives a train journey away. It was the last time we would be able to see her until graduation and so it was both very fun but very sad to say goodbye. Finally Friday was spent packing and having a final trip to Luton town centre and saying goodbye to friends.

 

Yesterday, after very last minute packing, I moved out of my student house and back to my hometown. I was expecting it to be a sad occasion but I didn't realise how sad I would be. My friend came round for a few hours in the morning to help me finish my packing and stayed to say goodbye until I left. Saying goodbye was very difficult, especially to my housemates who I had been living with for the past year and who were some of the first friends I made at University. 

 

 

In the three years that I have spent at University I have met some amazing people and made some incredible friends that I know I will be friends with for life. I did not expect to make such great friends and to become so attached to a town when I moved to Luton almost three years ago (also thank you to my Dad for teasing me all the way home about how sad I was.) Now I have graduation to look forward to and sorting out what I am doing for the rest of my life!

 

Good luck to everyone doing final exams and assessments, it is almost the end of exam season!

 

See you next week!

Robyn

Undergraduate Research Conference

Hello all! Hope you're doing well and the exams and final assessments are going well too!

It has now been over a full week since my final exam and therefore finishing all the work I need to do for my undergraduate degree in Psychology. In this last week I have tried to make the most of my remaining time in Luton; spending quality time with friends I am going to miss very much, volunteering and I also went down to visit London for the day which was very fun!

On Friday, it was the day of the Undergraduate Research Conference for my Psychology year group. The Undergraduate Research Conference is a conference organised by our lecturers in which we were able to present posters of our dissertation work, a selected few were able to present oral presentations of their dissertation work and guests from outside of the university were able to come and look at the work we had done.

It was an incredible feeling to have my dissertation presented in a poster form and have people read it and talk to me about and take an interest in it; all those months of late nights and early morning trying to make my dissertation the best it could be was suddenly all worth it, and it was really fun! You could tell when going to look at other people's posters too that they felt exactly the same and were so proud to show off the hard work they had done. It was a brilliant opportunity to have a look at other people's work and learn a little about different aspects of Psychology that I had not studied much on and to hear what people had to say about their own dissertations and the findings they had found.

Six people were also given the opportunity to give an oral presentation of their dissertation research to all those who attended the conference, including three of my friends (well done Mo, Diksha and Shona, your presentations were great!) It was a brilliant opportunity to hear more in detail about the research people from my year had done on their dissertations, and to hear the great lengths they had gone to conduct their research; there was one person who had conducted research using school children meaning that the ethics were very difficult and had taken many months to get the ethics right.

It was a brilliant and fun day, a lovely way to celebrate the hard work of the three years together and to spend time with the friends we had made over the three years. It was also slightly emotional. It was last day that I would be at university with my friends and saying goodbye to them adding "I'll see you at graduation" rather than "I'll see you after the weekend" made me realise that university life is now over aside from graduation, and that the next time I will see most of my university friends will be at graduation!

All in all, it has been a great week and I am very lucky to have made such good friends at university that saying goodbye to them is such a difficult thing. But now I have graduation to look forward to with them and lots of visits to see them!

Hope you're all having a great week and any work that you are still doing is going well!

See you next week!
Robyn